Punjab Chief Minister ParkashSingh Badal's appeal to INLD to join NDA notwithstanding, BJP today said its alliance with Haryana Janhit Congress will continue and a call on joining hands with Om Prakash Chautala's party will be taken by the leadership later.
"The alliance with Kuldeep
Bishnoi's HJC is intact and will continue. Badal is a senior leader and he was emphasising on the need for opposition unity when he said INLD should join hands with BJP in order to finish Congress. A united opposition is needed to achieve this," BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told PTI.

Naqvi was present at the rally of various parties in Kurukshetra yesterday where Badal made the appeal for INLD and BJP to come together.

HJC may have issues with INLD as the seats for which it wants to contest future elections may come down with another party from Haryana joining NDA.

However, HJC's concerns are mainly related to the assembly polls and not forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

BJP has tried to bring INLD to NDA-fold several times in the past but its overtures failed the last time in the assembly polls in 2009 and the two parties had contested the elections separately.

Assembly polls in Haryana are likely to be held after the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and may take place around October.

BJP leaders maintain that Badal exhorting INLD to join NDA is based more on the post-Emergency experience where all opposition parties cutting across ideological barriers had joined hands and succeeded in ousting Congress.

But BJP is aware of the sway INLD still enjoys in Haryana despite the corruption case against Chautala and his son in the teachers' recruitment scam. It would like to capitalise on this by aligning with INLD.

However, BJP leaders have not yet figured out how the alliance can be stitched without antagonising HJC.